The Bull Rider's Homecoming

Luke let his hand lead his numb leg to come up and cross casually over his good knee. She was watching the way his leg moved, and he fought the urge to cover it with the issue of Pro Bull Rider magazine lying on the couch next to him.

Ruby settled herself in the chair opposite him, a file and clipboard balanced on her lap. She sat upright, knees together, elbows close, the way she used to sit with him in study hall back before he’d coaxed her out of her shell. Ruby had always been a much more entertaining equation to solve than algebra.

“This won’t work,” he challenged again, knowing it made no sense but needing to keep her at a distance until the knots in his gut settled.

“So you said.” Her eyes fell to the cane he’d forgotten to hide in his rush to get “casually” settled on the couch before she came in the door, and he bit back a scowl. She gave him what he was sure was her worst “therapist” glare. “Don’t think I haven’t heard that kind of talk before.”

She’d heard it from him all those times he’d said he’d never be able to learn algebra. The history in the air between them was so thick and painful he could practically reach out and press his hand up against it like a cement wall.

Ruby opened her file folder with an infuriatingly clinical air. “Left leg, nerve root injury close to the spinal cord. Concussion, loss of consciousness at the time of injury. Ongoing symptoms include loss of muscle strength and neuropathy.”

Luke despised the clinical terms they used—why couldn’t they just say that a mean bull threw him against a fence at an event in Montana, knocked him out, and busted up his back. He remembered the ride, but any memory of the grisly fall came from video tape—he only woke up afterward in an ambulance with several panicked people poking and asking urgent questions.

“How would you rate your current level of pain?”

She’d have read every page of his file, so she knew that was a trick question. This new Ruby Sheldon wasn’t playing nice. “Ain’t nothin’,” he drawled, omitting the wink he usually gave the buckle bunnies. Those pretty, love-struck rodeo fans usually cooed and pouted over his collection of bruises and scratches after a show. They’d showed up at the hospital the first two days, then trickled off as the tour moved on.

Her eyes narrowed, and she clicked her pen. “On a scale of one to ten, please.” He had to admit to a shred of surprise that she could produce such a hard shell in his presence. Maybe hate really was more powerful than love, like Dad always said.

“Point-five.”

“Do you have difficulty with any limbs other than the involved leg?”

He sat back against the couch cushions. “I’ve been told all of me works just fine.”

That irritated her—those kinds of lines always did. She stood up and put her hands on her hips.

“Stand up.”

He glared at her. “You know, I believe I’m fine right here.”

Something shot through her eyes, a stubbornness that surprised him. “Stand up. I’m not going to be scared off, so how long this takes is entirely up to you. Let’s try standing for eight seconds. That ought to be a time frame you know well.”

Eight seconds. The length of a qualifying bull ride. Whenever she’d worried about how much risk or pain was involved in bull riding—which had been often—he’d always said, “Honey, I can take anything for eight seconds.” He hadn’t expected her to use their history against him.

Luke Buckton had burned a heap of bridges on his way out of this tiny town, and now it felt as if he was going to have to fight to keep the pile of ashes from rising up and choking him.

* * *

Ruby made herself look straight at Luke as he pulled his long body up off the couch. He was trying hard to hide every single weakness—physical and otherwise—but she wouldn’t allow it. I’m as stubborn as you are, Luke Buckton. And I have just as much riding on this as you do. Lana was right; success with a high profile client like him would bolster business. But right now, Ruby mostly just wanted to show Luke up. Who’s stronger now, cowboy?

She spied a straight-backed chair up against the wall and dragged it to his side. “Hold on to this and put all your weight on your good leg.”

Luke shot her a look, and she suspected he was concocting some remark about all of him being more than good, but he simply grabbed the chair and rocked back on one hip as if leaning against a bar in an Old West saloon.

“Raise your left leg as far as you can and hold it there, please.”

Effort tightened the corners of his cocky smile. He got the injured leg up about as far as his knees, and she noticed a tremor near the top.

“Like the boots?” He pointed toward his expensive-looking cowboy boots. Ruby guessed they cost as much as her used car. “Custom work. Gift from a sponsor.”

“Very nice,” she replied. “Take them off.”

“What?”

“I can hardly see how your ankle rotates if you’ve got it locked up inside all that fine, hand-tooled leather now, can I?”

He frowned. “None of the other gals made me take off my boots.”

Ruby wasn’t backing down. “None of the other therapists,” she emphasized the correction in terms, “got that far before you drove them off.”

There was a long, prickly pause before he said, “I can’t.”

It must have cost him to say that. His bitter tone made her hair stand on edge. He looked like a porcupine, defensive spines sticking out in all directions, warning the world to keep its distance.

Her heart twisted at the anguish she wondered if only she could see. Luke was deeply hurting, but scrambling to keep it hidden. It gave her only one way forward: if she was going to treat him, she’d have to meet his defenses head-on.

But this was Luke. Luke with those eyes and all that history. Ruby made herself hold his gaze despite the monster-sized flip it caused in her stomach. “You can’t what?” she asked as directly as she knew how. Do not back down.

He stared at her for a long moment. “I can’t get ’em on and off without...help.”

The last word stuck, as if he’d had to drag it up from some pit to say it out loud.

Cowboys pulled their boots off every day. Most did it without even thinking, either heel-to-toe or with a fancy little hook-like gizmo set up beside many Texan doorways. Way back, she’d seen Luke do it hundreds of times. Of course, such maneuvers required standing on one leg—something Ruby was pretty sure Luke could no longer do.

Ruby carefully turned the straight chair so that the seat faced forward. If getting him to receive help came in the form of this near standoff just to remove his boots, then this was as good a place as any to start.

Grace. Was she strong enough to extend grace to the man who had hurt her so deeply back then? The moment suddenly struck her as equally important to her as it was to him. If she claimed to come as far as she had from the teenager Luke had left behind, the proof would come in what she did next.

Slowly, Ruby kneeled down at the foot of the chair and motioned for Luke to sit. “Well, then, help it is.”

The gesture startled him—she watched the astonishment flash across his features before he hid them behind that famous grin. A deep resolve settled into place under her breastbone, the same resolve that had gotten her through all her therapist schooling with record speed and exemplary grades despite a mountain of obstacles.

She folded her hands in her lap and stared up at him. I’ll sit here for an hour if that’s what it takes, Luke. I expect you know that. I expect that’s why I’m here. So come on, cowboy, what’s it gonna be?

The long, tall body still held an athlete’s lines. The take-on-the-world planes of his shoulders, the try-and-stop-me set of his jaw. And yet, despite his strength and determination, all his features seemed to tip on the knife’s edge of a man in doubt. Ruby found herself doing what she’d never thought she’d do again: praying for Luke Buckton.

Slowly—excruciatingly slowly and with all the ferocity of a bull fixing to charge—Luke sat down.

Chapter Three

Ruby drove a bit down the road before she eased her little car to the shoulder. She let out the breath she’d been holding since pulling the guesthouse door shut behind her and allowed her head to sink against the steering wheel.

The longest hour of my life.

Once Luke sat down, Ruby had expected things to smooth out. Having broken down the barrier and earned that one shred of compliance, she’d expected to gain more.

She’d forgotten who she was dealing with.

Oh, she’d gotten the boot off all right—albeit with a comical sequence of yanks and tugs—to expose the injured foot. When she asked him to use that foot, to show her his range of motion with the ankle or anything else, Luke turned mean. His frustration nearly darkened the room, it was so intense.

Luke had always had a temper—it was probably half of what made him such a good rider. Something came over him when he got angry, a laser-sharp focus and determination that plowed through anything standing in his way. He’d spent most of his teenage years angry, primarily at his father, and that anger had driven him not just to succeed but to excel. Now that anger was directed at his own body, which made it much more vicious as it spilled out onto anyone foolish enough to be in range. Lord, Ruby sent up a moan of a prayer, he’s a wounded animal—twice as mean and four times as dangerous.

It wasn’t as if Ruby didn’t know how to handle an ornery patient. Difficult patients were, in fact, a specialty of hers. Lana said, “Your greatest talent is seeing through the hard actions to the wounded soul beneath.” When Lana grafted Ruby into her agency, setting up Martins Gap Physical Therapy as an affiliated partnership of Lana’s own practice in Austin, she’d said it was because of Ruby’s gifts. “You always find the one gesture that will open up a crack in the walls patients build around themselves.” Ruby could always find a crack and pry it open.

Today that gift felt more like a curse. The true torment of the last hour wasn’t Luke’s behavior—that was just a coping mechanism, the battle weapon of a man at the end of his rope.

No, her real problem was her ability to see through him. To peer under the gleam of the brilliant shell he showed the world and see a man who wasn’t sure he could pull off the recovery he needed. A massive cauldron of doubt and pain boiled under that cocky disregard. She’d seen it for just a moment as he sat down, but within minutes of that glimpse he’d slammed the shell back on with the ferocity of the bull bison who wandered the Blue Thorn pastures.

Ruby’s cell phone buzzed beside her, and she fished it from her handbag to peer at the screen.

Been praying for you. Call me when it’s over.

Lana was the best instructor and mentor Ruby could ever ask for. Mama and Grandpa were supportive, but Lana often knew just how to bolster her spirits. It was probably due to Lana’s prayers that Ruby had lasted as long as she had with Luke.

Forgoing a text, Ruby dialed her mentor, taking a deep breath as Lana clicked on the line before the first ring even finished.

“And how was the Buckton beast?”

“Beastly,” she replied, glad to feel a damp laugh bubble up from all the tension in her chest.

“Does he look like you remember?”

“Oh, his looks have improved with age. Those eyes are still...those eyes. I’d forgotten how dark they could turn. That man’s angry glare could set a tree on fire.”

“That charming, huh?”

“Let’s just say I’m not so sure the Blue Thorn bulls have the worst temper on that ranch. If he’s the charmer of the bull riding circuit, I didn’t see any of it.”

“A mean son of gun, hmm?”

Ruby let her head fall back against the seat rest. “He was mean—but not in the way you might think. He didn’t yell at me or call me names. His methods were more cold. Heartless. Wisecracking and dismissive.”

“Ouch. How are you?”

Ruby looked back at the Blue Thorn’s rolling pastures that filled her rearview mirror. “I don’t know. I mean, I knew it’d be hard. But it was so much harder than hard—if that makes any sense. It felt more like sixty hours than sixty minutes.”

“Did you get him to do anything?”

In fact, she had. That was the one foothold she had in this mess, and no one could grab hold of an ounce of progress better than Ruby Sheldon. “Two exercises. And I tricked him into showing me his range of motion, which isn’t much at all. He thinks he’ll be back on a bull, that’s clear.”

“Will he? What sense do you get about his prognosis?”

“I have no way of knowing. At least not yet. If anybody could pull it off though, it’d be him.”

“Only...” Lana had caught the hesitation in her voice.

Ruby let one hand rest on the file. She’d have to write down her notes from the visit, and that would feel so very odd. It’d be a challenge to think of Luke Buckton in purely clinical terms. “You know how this goes. It may not be up to him.”

“Do you feel like it’s up to you?”

“No. Yes. Honestly, I don’t know. Even the best therapy program we have, followed to the letter, can only do so much.” Lana was the seasoned professional, but Ruby had seen patients throw themselves wholeheartedly into therapy and then progress both more and less than anyone expected—and it wasn’t always clear why. “I suppose it’s up to God more than anything else.”

She could hear Lana sigh on her end. She’d told her mentor the entire history she and Luke had together. “Ruby, I know I told you he could be a high-profile client for you, but is it worth it? You don’t owe this man anything. I’m sure he could pay anybody to come from Austin and take his bad attitude three times a week for thirty minutes.”

“I’m not so sure he can, Lana.”

“Don’t those guys earn big bucks? I read the guy who won last year’s championships was worth millions.”

“In the big series, yes. Luke’s not quite there yet. Besides, you don’t earn if you can’t ride, and Luke’s been out of commission since June. His sponsors may have all pulled out already. I don’t think he’d be back on the Blue Thorn unless it was his only option. Luke wasn’t coming home until he came home a champion, you know?”

“Don’t start making excuses for him. You told me you spent months crying over that man.”

Ruby closed her eyes. “I did. But I’m not that girl anymore, either.”

“And you just proved that. You could walk away from this right now and I would back you up.”

“I don’t quit on patients.”

“Luke Buckton isn’t ‘a patient.’ He’s an emotional minefield. Hearing the way you sound right now, I’m sorry I ever encouraged you to take him on. This can’t end well—for you or for him. You’ve got way too much water under the bridge.”

Lana was right. Their history did make things worse. “I know, Lana, but maybe it’s time to burn that bridge. After all, if I can get through Luke Buckton’s treatment, then I’ll know for sure I’ll never quit on a patient.”

“All right, I told myself I wasn’t going to ask this, but I have to know. You don’t still carry a torch for him, do you?”

The most startling thing about today had been the tiny, irrational part of her that did still care. The flicker of against-her-will compassion that made her walk to the car for a “forgotten” file just to save his dignity. It stunned her how, after all the ways he’d hurt her, her heart could resurrect any care at all.

“He needs grace.” It was true, but even she knew it wasn’t the whole truth.

“Perhaps,” Lana sighed. “But maybe it doesn’t need to come from you.”

Ruby looked back at the ranch in her rearview mirror. “Maybe I need to know I’m strong enough to show him grace. Maybe I need the closure I never got. Maybe I want the chance to walk away from Luke in a way that showed more mercy than the way he walked away from me.”

“I just want to be sure you’re taking him on for the right reasons. Professional concern isn’t the same thing as nostalgic sympathy.”

Sympathy was the last thing Luke wanted, or needed. That man needed someone to wage war on his condition, maybe even to wage war on the man himself.

If Ruby Sheldon was anything, she was a warrior.

* * *

Luke eased himself up off the hay bale as he watched his brother, Gunner, check some records in the barn after lunch. Nobody had yet said a word about Ruby’s visit—not even Gran, who he’d expected to cross the lawn the minute Ruby’s car was out of sight and grill him for details.

Lunch was an excruciating exercise in avoiding the topic. Gran, Gunner, Gunner’s wife of two years, Brooke, Brooke’s ten-year-old daughter, Audie, and even their seven-month-old boy, Trey, seemed to stare holes in him while talking about every other subject they could find. Good. Everyone ought to know the subject of Ruby Sheldon was off-limits. Still, Luke wondered how long that reprieve would last.

He balanced his weight on the good leg until he knew how well the bad one was working at the moment—an annoyingly necessary tactic these days—and leaned up against the barn wall as casually as possible. It was always an endless negotiation to be upright. How long would it be before he threw his leg over the back of a motorcycle without a second thought again? Over the back of a horse? A bull? He’d pressed both his surgeons in Montana, as well as the specialist he’d seen in Austin, but no one had any timelines to give.

Go ahead, ask me. Gunner could never leave well enough alone where he was involved, and after Ruby’s visit Luke was itching for a fight anyhow. He’d thought he’d appreciate the quiet of the ranch, but the truth was the inactivity was making him nuts. The guesthouse—the whole ranch—was too quiet, too slow, too watchful. One of his motorcycles was still in the ranch garage, and if he thought he stood half a chance of driving it with any control, he’d be off down the road in a heartbeat.

Gunner looked up to catch Luke’s stare. “I suppose it’s none of my business,” his brother said, replying to the question Luke hadn’t asked.

“It isn’t. But you’re gonna ask anyway, so go ahead.”

“Why are you being such an idiot?”

Luke was expecting a more specific question, but wasn’t it just like Gunner to paint his entire life in idiotic terms instead of just his attitude toward Ruby? It stumped him for a reply—Luke wasn’t sure where to start.

Gunner, evidently, knew exactly where to start. He straightened up, making Luke resent every one of the three inches Gunner had on him. “I thought Ruby showed a lot of spine coming out here after the way you’ve been behaving. Tell me, is it all an act, or are you really just that mean now?”

“I can’t stand any of that stupid ‘stretch this way’ and ‘push against here’ nonsense.”

Gunner returned his gaze to the papers. “So you’ve got this all figured out then. You’ll just heal on your own and be back to break new bones next season.” Gunner looked so much like their father it made Luke want to kick something. As if he could. It had been so hard to get his boot back on after Ruby left that the frustration was eating him alive.

“It’s worked before.” Luke crossed his arms over his chest. “Come on, this isn’t the first time I’ve come up hurt.” It wasn’t. But it was the first time he had come up hurt this bad.

“No,” Gunner replied as he closed the ledger and shoved it back into a drawer. “But forgive me for pointing out this is the first time you’ve come home.”

Luke’s teeth ground at Gunner’s words. That was just like his big brother to cut right to the marrow without mercy. Luke fished for a good comeback, and came up empty. Instead he found a nail in the wall beside him and began to wiggle it loose.

“I know you.” Gunner went on. “I’ve been you. You wouldn’t be here if it weren’t your last chance.”

“This is not my last chance,” Luke shot back as he yanked the nail from the wall. He glared at Gunner’s lousy, end-of-the-road choice of words. “I figured it was time to show up, that’s all.”

“That’s a load of bull, and you know it.” Gunner met his glare with one of his own. “How about you just stop pretending this isn’t a major setback?”

“It’s not a major setback.” Now he was really starting to sound like a five-year-old. Go ahead, Gunner, don’t hold back. Go for ‘career-ending’ why don’t you? You won’t be the first, and right now I’d love a reason to punch you. He threw the nail into a nearby barrel and found another one to work loose.

Gunner grabbed his hand on the nail and gripped it tight to hold it still. “Don’t you get it, Luke? No one here cares whether or not you ride next season. Whether you win the tour next season or world championship the season after that or never get on a bull again. This is your family. You don’t have to go all ‘big shot’ on us. You surely didn’t have to go all ‘big shot’ on Ruby or anyone else.”

“Nobody needs to baby me!” Luke yanked his hand out from under Gunner’s, the nail underneath leaving a small scrape on his palm. He shook his hand and then sucked on the wound while turning to head out the barn door. Every inch of him wanted to storm out, but his slow gait made it impossible.

“More bull. You’re hurt. Bad, if I had to guess—and I have to guess, don’t I? Because you’re not saying anything.” Gunner walked up and stood right in front of him now, his softened expression even worse than his previous glare. “Luke,” he said, in lower tones, glancing back toward the big house as if keeping his words away from prying ears, “just how bad are you hurt? Really?”

“Nothin’ to tell,” Luke dodged, shrugging.

“I don’t buy that for a minute. Talk to me. It’s eating you alive, man, even I can see it.”

His brother’s words started up a war in Luke’s chest—the need to talk waging battle with the need to keep everyone from knowing. His surgeons and even the local doc had been sworn to secrecy. His agent didn’t know the whole of it. If even a hint of this ever made it back to his sponsors...

“Don’t know,” he said finally, feeling rattled by even letting that much slip out.

“Of course you know.”

“No, I mean I really don’t know. Nobody does. It’s not pain. I’d be better if it were just pain. It’s...” He’d kept it bottled up for long enough that it fairly boiled inside him, desperate to get out. “I don’t feel anything. The nerves—they’re shot. At least for now. And nobody knows if they’ll stay that way.”

Gunner was wrong. It didn’t help to tell someone. It felt as if saying it aloud let the facts take root in the real world instead of just infesting his worries. The weight of not knowing felt heavier than ever.

Luke took a step toward his brother, hating how much effort the action involved. “So all the stupid therapies in the world can’t change the fact that I may have fried my leg, get it?” He hissed the words like the threat they were. “Either the feeling’s coming back or it ain’t. I’ve got no say in how this ends. None.” He jabbed an angry finger at Gunner and his infuriatingly compassionate expression. “So forgive me if I’m not a ball of sunshine about the whole thing. I need to beat this. I need to get my leg back. I need to show the whole tour that I am not washed-out for good.”

“Luke...”

“Don’t!” Luke shot back. “Don’t you dare give me that ‘don’t give up hope look.’ I can’t take that from you. Or from Ruby, or from anybody.” He started making his way back to the guesthouse, needing to get out of the open space where anybody could watch him limp. A thought turned him around—why did it always take so much effort to turn around?—and he gave Gunner the darkest look he could manage. “Not one word to Gran. Or Ellie. Or anyone. Understand?”

Gunner held up his hands. “I get it. They ought to know, but if you don’t want...”

“Not one word,” Luke repeated, turning back toward the house.

Gunner’s voice came after him. “Ruby knows. She’s got your file, so she knows, doesn’t she?”

Luke just kept walking.

Chapter Four

“You came back.”

Ruby couldn’t read the look on Luke’s face Wednesday morning as he opened the guesthouse door. Was he surprised, pleased or irritated? Likely all of the above, she decided. “Yes, I am. Surprised?”